I hate waiting for the bus. What I hate more than waiting for the bus is not knowing when the bus is supposed to arrive. On my way to work in the morning, it’s no problem as buses arrive quickly. When I am taking the loser cruiser on the weekend or at night, I will stand at the bus stop pacing around and thinking to myself, “When the hell is the bus going to come, I have been waiting here forever,” (even though it has only been a few minutes).

I become really dramatic when the bus doesn’t arrive within five minutes of me waiting. Sometimes I step off the curb and venture out onto the street to get a better look. I feel like the more I pace around and walk into the street the faster the bus will come, but it doesn’t help. I have friends that smoke and some of them use the rule of: “If you light a cigarette then a bus will come.” This also doesn’t help, but don’t tell smokers that believe that rule because they swear by it.

I know that some bus stops have a little schedule on the bus-stop pole or you can get a bus schedule to carry around with you. You can also check the internet before you leave your house and plan your route accordingly. This is all fine and dandy, but I just learned that if you text your bus-stop number, (which is the five-digit number located on the upper right hand of the bus-stop sign), to 33333 you’ll get a reply within a few seconds later telling you when the next bus(es) are arriving.

This feature is called ‘Next bus’ and it launched back in December. Next Bus is free to use—apart from the text-messaging costs stated in an individual’s contract with their wireless service provider.

You can even add an application onto your Facebook profile.

I now use this feature quite a bit and I have been pretty happy with the results. Once and a while, the response will be a few minutes off the actual arrival time, but for the most part it works great.

So next time you are risking your life stepping out into the street or pacing around like a mad man, you now know that you can text you bus-stop number and sit back and relax knowing when your nerd hauler is coming to haul you away.